Chapter 26
"In all this, we haven't asked the most important question." Gold turns to his avian friend after Emma leaves. "Josiah, do you want to be a man again?"
The bird bobs its head without hesitation.
With just a slight hesitation–for it now means solving two problems: breaking the new curse and reversing the curse's effect upon Dove–Gold replies, "Then I'll do my best to make it so."
"You changed him from a bird to a man once before," Belle ponders. "Why can't you again?"
"There's now a curse upon him that's trapped him into this form. It's a matter of understanding this curse fully; what we see here may be just one of its effects, and then I have to know the exact cause so I can unravel the magic effectively and safely." He tries to sound confident as he addresses the bird. "My theory, Josiah, is that remnants of the original curse sprang to life with the introduction of magic to this world. If that's the case, since the original curse was my creation, I know it well, and that should give me a head start. What may complicate matters is that Nature, in this world, seems to be reacting to magic like a body would react to a virus: as something to be defended against. But perhaps I can convince Nature that magic is a vaccine, and then she will accept the intrusion." He stands. "I need to get back to my lab, and Belle, if you'll start looking through the books in the cabinet in the shop workroom, I'll give you a list of terms to look for."
"You have a court date at four o'clock."
He groans, but he knows resistance is futile. He's up against a power greater than his own: Belle's sense of right and wrong. "This evening, then, I'll get to work. Josiah, I'd like you to go into the woods: there are several plants I'll need."
How strange it feels to be speaking his plans for magic aloud, after centuries of secretiveness. How strange to have another's help, freely given in full knowledge of his intentions, rather than wrung out through manipulation.
How reassuring it feels to not be alone.
"I know how you feel about magic," he begins as he drives Belle to the shop.
"Only magic can correct this," she answers. "I want us to help Jo, and we must break this new curse. But after that–Rumple, it's what magic does to the people who wield it, and the wedge it drives between us. That's what I resent. After things have been set to rights–I know it's asking a lot, but wouldn't you rather stand before Bae on your own two feet instead of leaning on magic?"
"I was a wizard for three hundred years, Belle," his voice drops. "It's who I am. But if that's the price I have to pay to have Bae back and keep you in my life too, I'll do it."
She runs a soothing hand along his arm. "I believe in you, Rumple. You've always honored your agreements with me. And I have every confidence that you'll break this new curse."
He falls silent.
In the shower, Belle is singing; in their bedroom, he's changing into his pajamas. His skin feels hot, burning with unused magic: just to take the edge off, he conjures a pair of wooden hangers for his suit and sends the clothes flying across the bedroom to the closet. It's such a small use of magic–it's like a marathon runner quitting after a two-block jog, but anything more, Belle would notice.
He stands with his shirt hanging open, staring into the mirror. His skin has turned bright gold, an indicator that his power has reached its peak. He'll have to start using it regularly or it will affect his physical and emotional state.
How weird his skin looks, sparkling under the electric lights. How rough and bumpy. How broken his teeth. How wrinkled his face. How ugly and old he is.
In the beginning of his curse, he was so caught up with the thrill of power that he scarcely noticed the ugliness; soon enough, he was absorbed in the search for Bae and didn't give a damn what his body looked like. In fact, the few times he thought about it at all, he figured it was a just punishment for choosing magic over his son. But circumstances are different here. He's gotten used to straight hair, white teeth, smooth skin and the occasional hidden admiring glances. He's gotten used to looking like he belongs in this world.
As he pulls his lower lip down to examine his blackened teeth, a pair of arms slips around his waist and a soft body presses against his back. She's standing directly behind him, so he can't see her in the mirror, but in his mind's eye he can: he finds Belle most beautiful when she's just come from the shower, warm and damp, skin glowing, free of cosmetics and jewelry and most of her clothes. The only time she's more beautiful is in the afterglow of their lovemaking.
"Why do you suppose you changed back? You didn't cross the town line, did you?" Belle asks.
"No."
"If it was because the curse broke, why didn't any of the rest of us change back? Archie, the nuns, they haven't transformed."
"A payment must always be made for any use of magic, and I used a great deal. This may be the price magic has extracted from me." He phrases his question carefully; he dreads the answer he expects. "Belle, can you tolerate–" he waves at his mirror image–"this? How I look now?"
"In the castle, when you were occupied with the wheel or your experiments," she confesses, "I would watch you from the corner of my eye. I'd pretend to be dusting, but I was wondering."
He feels her chest rise and fall against his back. "Wondering what?"
"What it would feel like to touch you." Her hands slide under his shirt. "Whether you were sensitive to touch, as I am. What you would taste like." Her hands slide the shirt down, allowing it to fall. Her tongue draws a wet trail up his shoulder blade to the nape of his neck and then to his ear, where he's especially sensitive. Her teeth tug at his earlobe; her nose nuzzles the shell of his ear and he closes his eyes to concentrate on the sensations. "What sounds you would make as you undressed me."
"My sweet lady, I'd always assumed you didn't know about such base activities."
"I was innocent, but not naive. And from the moment you prevented my fall and I felt your arms around me for the first time, I awakened to desire. I wanted you to touch me, everywhere." Her voice goes husky. "If I had known then that you wanted me too, you wouldn't have gotten much spinning done."
He turns in her arms and admires the view. She hasn't slipped on her nightgown yet. "I was ugly then, in every way a man can be ugly, and now I'm that creature again."
"No," she insists. "You were endlessly fascinating and irresistibly handsome then, and now that I know the feel and the taste and the sounds of you, I want you more."
"You're looking through the eyes of love, sweetheart."
"And desire." She nips at the soft skin above his collarbone. "Whether you're Rumplestiltskin or Gold, both of you stir me. I still can't resist watching you and touching you."
"Dear heart, you know just what to say to boost a man's spirits." He reaches to turn out the lights, but she shakes her head–leaving the lights on is a common request from her, so she can watch his changing expressions as they touch. He leaves them on for her, and in a few minutes he forgets the image he saw in the mirror; all that matters is what he sees in her eyes.
In the morning, Gold beats the sun in getting up. He has another court date at nine, but he can get in two solid hours of research before then. With one of his books and a legal pad tucked under his arm, he makes his way downstairs, but halts midway: there's a commotion in his study. He sets the book and the pad on the banister and, silencing his footfalls with a little magic, he approaches the study. Rather than open the door, he casts a spell that sets a window in its frame, enabling him to see into the room.
Papers and books are strewn about. One of the African violets has been dug up from its pot. The drapes hang loosely from broken rings. And at the window overlooking the garden, Dove is throwing himself repeatedly against the pane.
Gold walks through the door without opening it. He flicks on a light, and then he can see smears of red staining Dove's feathers.
"Josiah?" The bird doesn't react to him; it continues to batter itself against the glass. "Josiah, stop. Come and tell me what's wrong." As Gold approaches slowly, the bird cries out and streaks across the room, perching on the highest bookshelf. "Josiah? Please come down. Let me help you."
The bird streaks across the room again, tossing itself at the window. Gold stops moving, stops speaking: everything he does seems to agitate the bird. Staring through the window, the dove flaps its wings and cries out.
Gold sends a gentle pulse of sedating magic at the bird. With a thud, the dove drops to the window sill. It shudders as Gold picks it up, tending its wounds with a healing spell. "Josiah, show me what's wrong." Gold strokes the feathers soothingly, tendrils of magic reaching through his fingertips and into the quavering body. He finds no illness to explain this mad behavior. He strokes the tiny head, sending another magical inquiry, and what he finds there makes him slump against the wall. "Damn it," he hisses. But what he means is "damn me."
An hour later, Belle finds them in the kitchen, Gold bent over his book and a cup of now-cold coffee. "My two favorite men in all the realms," she yawns, planting a kiss on the crown of Gold's head. Then she jerks awake as she notices Dove's position: the bird is trapped inside a wire cage.
"Why did you cage him?" She reaches for the little door of the cage, but Gold seizes her wrist.
"No, don't open that. He'll try to fly away, to join a flock."
"What are you talking about? He won't go anywhere. He wants us to change him back." She pulls away. "Jo, what's wrong?"
"Belle, he's—his reversion is complete," Gold stumbles in his explanation.
"I don't understand."
"His mind has. . .gone back to its natural state. To what it was before magic change—before I changed him with magic. All his memories of being a human are gone." Gold's eyes plead with her for understanding, for patience and most of all, for forgiveness.
Because they both know whose fault this is.
In the early evening, Belle and Gold drive out to the town line. No one has repaired the Welcome sign that Dove's Yukon knocked over, so Gold does it with a flick of his wrist. He then sets a box on the ground. "All right," he glances at his companion for encouragement: Belle nods, her features still as tight as they were this morning, but now less with anger than with worry. "The lamp, please, Belle." She fetches the golden lamp from the box and holds it in open hands. Gracefully, Gold floats his hand over the lamp and his magic transforms it into a catcher's mitt. Belle loops a string around the mitt, then sets the mitt onto the street and pushes it with a toe until it's across the borderline. A glow encompasses the glove as it's being pushed across the line; when the glow dissipates, the glove has transformed back into the genie lamp. With the string, Belle reels it back in: it remains a lamp.
"The girdle, please." It's nothing like this world's girdles. It's worn on the outside as a symbol of rank: it's made of gold and carries a large diamond in the center. Rumple made the girdle as a thank-you gift for a warrior queen who had taught a teenage Baelfire archery, but the girdle came back to him years later when the queen died in battle.
Gold transforms it into a choo-choo train. As soon as it's pushed across the border, it reverts to its original form.
For the third experiment, Gold transforms a sword into a ducky pull-toy, but explains that the sword was enchanted by Regina in the Enchanted Forest; originally, it had been a horseshoe. When Belle pushes the ducky across, it transforms into a horseshoe.
Gold tests the curse with five more objects, achieving the same result. "Thinking about children?" Belle inquires, for all of his transformations have been toys. He admits, "Thinking of Bae."
Staring at his odd collection of objects, Gold rubs his chin and frowns. "So the curse doesn't just reverse the most recent spell; it reverses all the spells that have been enacted on the subject."
"So that's why Jo reverted to his original form. If I were to cross over, I would become Lady Belle," Belle says thoughtfully.
"And quite possibly, in a few hours, you'd lose all memory of your life in Storybrooke and the people you met here."
"But if you were to cross. . . because you had been transformed by magic already, this curse would take your magic, change you into Rumplestiltskin the Spinner."
"And if my theory is correct, I'd have no memory of anything that happened after I became the Dark One."
She blanches. "No memory of me."
"I'd forget you, sweetheart, but I think I'd have a feeling that something was missing. If I met you on the street, I wouldn't know you or anyone else I've met in the past three hundred years. I'd remember only Bae, because only my relationship with him predates the time when magic transformed me." Gold glares at the objects packed into the box. He raises his cane as though he'd smash the contents of the box, but he lowers it again. Smashing precious antiques–even though he can repair them with magic–really won't change anything, not even his mood.
"We can't leave, then. Even if we find Bae, we can't go to him." Belle slumps against the hood of the Caddy.
"I've come too far to let this stop me." Gold grits his teeth. "Too far to give him up—too far to let you go. There is a way, or damn it, I'll make one."